Jack Kirby co-created countless characters for Marvel, including the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Avengers, etc. His estate has sent out 45 notices of copyright infringement to such companies as Marvel Entertainment, Disney, Paramount, Sony and others, insisting they intended to own the full copyright for every character by 2014. This could be a major problem for Disney, who recently purchased Marvel.
Under copyright law, the author or his heirs can begin a process to regain copyrights a certain period of years after the original grant. If Mr. Kirby’s four children were to gain the copyright to a co-created character, they might become entitled to a share of profits from films or other properties using it. They might also find themselves able to sell rights to certain characters independently of Marvel, Disney, or the various studios that have licensed the Marvel properties for their hit films.
In July, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that Warner Brothers and its DC Comics unit had not violated rights of the Siegel heirs in handling internal transactions related to Superman, but an earlier ruling had already granted the heirs a return of their share in the copyright. In the late 1990s, Mr. Toberoff represented a television writer, Gilbert Ralston, who sued Warner over the rights to the film “Wild, Wild West.” The suit was ultimately settled.
Copyright issues have become increasingly difficult for Hollywood, as it continues to trade on characters and stories that were created decades ago, but are now subject to deadlines and expiration dates under federal copyright law.
[Editor's Note: It's both interesting and sad to see how litigious the comic book industry is. In order to stay in business and to only spend tens of thousands of dollars defending ourselves rather than the necessary millions (???), by agreement we aren't allowed to discuss the matter's details, but we have been under legal threats and attacks ourselves in the recent past. Who with, you wonder? What about? Well what do you think of the cool fictional photoshop work below? Neat, huh? Yeah, child's college fund and an entire retirement savings worth of "neat". It's quite inspiring illuminating to see super-heroes® in action first-hand.]
For the past year there has been reports of people dressing up like super heroes and taking justice into their own hands, something that has caused concern with law enforcement officials who hope this geekery doesn’t go too far. It was only a few days ago when a masked man known as the Shadow Hare announced plans to clean up the streets of Cincinnati, insisting he is part of the “Allegiance of Heroes”.
“We help enforce the law by doing what we can in legal standards, so we carry handcuffs, pepper spray … all the legal weapons,” Shadow Hare said. “We will do citizen’s arrests. We will intervene on crimes if there is one happening in front of us.”
Shadow Hare said the life of a costumed avenger has its risks — two years ago he suffered a dislocated shoulder while trying to help a woman who was being robbed. However, he said neither injury nor criticism will keep him from his mission to make Cincinnati a better place.
Now that you’re convinced this is real, then you’ll be happy (or concerned) to know that a new website has launched that rounds up all the real-life superheroes, including photos, abilities and documentation of their heroic acts.
[Editor's Note: Our site's founder, Captain Almighty, has no affiliation with any wannabe, fake, lame and/or fruity super heroes (such as "The Flash") and is not registered with any publicly known "super hero" organization accept for our own Almighty Alliance which you too may apply to by becoming a member of the new GameAlmighty.com or by registering here.]
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